He hated it. Everything about this place made his skin crawl. Talbet had been dreading this day from the moment that he learned the birth would take place here. Only one other time had he been within the Sundering Chamber. Years before and it still haunted his dreams even to this day. There was something dank in the air. Stale flesh, like the smell of meat just as it starts to turn bad...The chamber was round, circling about a center pool nine feet across. The walls....those walls. The walls appeared to be marble, not that he had ever touched them; or even looked at them for that long. Carved images. Bodies and faces. Some twisted. Some monsters and demons. Some filled with pain, others with joy. A mangled tapestry in stone that seemed to be alive. Living stone. It never moved when he was looking at it. But...then he turned, sometimes out of the corner of his eyes he could see the shadows change shape. Arms twisted and reached, mouths fell open in silent, tormented screams. He had the distinct felling that he was being watched and that if he let one of those arms touch him, that he too would become a living part of stone. Nakkiga was in labor. Talbet stood at the edge of that pool, trying to offer support that was not wanted. Nakkiga had made a point to let him know what he should not speak unless she directly called for him to do so. Standing helplessly, feeling more of a bystander than a father to be. All he could do was watch. It seemed to him that hours passed. Nakkiga was chest deep in the milky water that pooled at the center of the chamber. Constant was the slow dripping from the ceiling. It fell like tears from a single face carved at the crown point. As if all the tears from those screaming faces was gathered at one point to drip from an ever crying face. . Nakkiga let out a single cry and all the faces carved into the walls seemed to scream an echoed call. Talbot swore he could hear them. But then his attention was on Nakkiga and the child that was being borne. He could see it just below the surface of the water. He should have been overjoyed, he was a father now. Instead, there seemed to be an heavy feeling of dread hanging about his shoulder. Perhaps it was just the room. He knelt at the edge of the pool, reaching towards Nakkiga. "It's a girl...." She said, he could just make out a dark patch of hair and was leaning in to get a better look when his world ended. With a single swift motion, Nakkiga came across with the dagger that was used for gutting the umbilical cord. His neck cut clean open to his spin. The horror, pain and shock showed in his eyes for only an instant as his life spilled in a river or crimson to colour the pool a darker red. He fell forward into the pool. Nakkiga stood at the edge of the pool watching as Talbet's body sank into the pink waters. She turned and left, wrapped within a silken robe. No baby in her arms.

It was one year later to the day that Nakkiga returned to the Sundering Chambers. The pool had grown over with a skin. Dark grey vanes pulsed like roads across the surface. Like the shell of an egg it had already started to crack. Something moved. Fingers pressed from the inside to break the skin. Stone-white, ghosted flesh came as an arm and a shoulder struggled out of the skin. Fingers clawed and broke the surface and with a sudden push, two heads broke free. A first, staggered breath. Silent screams from stone faces. "An so it begins...." Nakkiga stood looking at the two figures newly born. Powder-white the pare of them. Eyes of rose-quarts. Albinos.